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Africa's Great Green Wall Project

This project also came into news during India-Africa Summit

The Green Wall initiative was conceived and first proposed by Nigeria's ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005. While the idea was met enthusiastically, the African nations have lacked funding to begin work on the project. In late 2007 however, the European Union pitched in with help in designing the plan. The EU has promised further support with implementation, as well.

The 25-member African organization CEN-SAD (Community of Sahel-Saharan States) has initiated in 2008 a project to build a Great Green Wall across the continent from Mauritania in West Africa to Djibouti in the East.

This initiative, which is linked to sustainable development, reflects a strong political will to conduct in well delineated regions of the Sahelian and Saharan countries a set of concerted and coherent interventions with the aim of achieving simultaneously the three following goals:

1) natural resource conservation, development and management;

2) strengthening infrastructure;

3)improving the living conditions of the resident communities.

The project is an attempt to stop growing desertification in the northern regions of the continent.

Other key objectives of the Great Green Wall initiative include conservation and recovery of existing vegetation, introduction of new plantations, promotion of modern bioenergy instead of unsustainable biomass use, and improved range and water resources management.

The Great Green Wall Initiative has been conceived as a set of cross-sectoral actions and interventions aimed at the conservation and protection of natural resources with a view to achieving development, and particularly, alleviating poverty.

This project consists in planting trees over a distance of 7,000 km from Dakar to Djibouti to constitute a 5 km wide green strip across the desert to stop any further progress of desertification process. With the regeneration of biodiversity,plan is to give our planet a new 'green lung' and contribute thus to the fight against climatic changes. Alongside of the Great Green Wall plans are to build water capture basins...to enable farmers in rural areas to grow food all year long, develop fish farming and satisfy their nutritional needs and even export market garden produce.Senegal has been chosen to provide technical leadership for the effort owning to its past successes in combating desertification.